Total War 3rd person walkthrough for the Warhammer III mod

Derpy's Third-Person Battles is a fan mod for Total War: Warhammer III, posted to the Steam Workshop on October 18, 2026 by a modder who goes by D3rpyN3wb (Steam Workshop). The game itself came out on February 16, 2022, developed by Creative Assembly and Feral Interactive and published by SEGA and Feral Interactive (Steam). Press F2 on a unit and the camera drops behind one soldier, and from then on you fight with WASD and the mouse while the battle carries on around you. By October 21, three days after posting, the mod had 13,596 subscribers and 885 ratings (Steam Workshop). A Shogun 2 third-person mod has also turned up, but only as a video.

The Warhammer III mod runs on memreader Plus and a decompiler

Warhammer III gives modders no script command for most of this, so the mod reads and writes the game's memory directly (Steam Workshop). For that it needs a second Workshop item, memreader Plus by a modder called Druwski. It is a Lua library that lets other mods read and write the game's memory and call the game's own functions. It can also hook a function, so a mod's code runs every time the game calls it (memreader Plus). Druwski posted it on September 30, 2026, and by October 21 it had 35,509 subscribers, more than twice the third-person mod's count.

Finding the right addresses is the slow part. The code is public on GitHub under an MIT license, and the repository includes scripts that run the Ghidra decompiler on Warhammer3.exe, plus a design note on what that turned up about battle soldiers (GitHub). On the Workshop page the author writes that an AI assistant, Claude, found and measured the memory addresses the mod depends on, along with its animation timings, and warns that some may be wrong for units nobody has tested (Steam Workshop). The README calls it an unofficial fan mod that publishes no Creative Assembly or Games Workshop art or game files; the HUD loads the game's own art from its install path at run time (GitHub).

The engineering is more careful than the BETA label suggests. All game addresses sit in one file, platform.lua, so when a patch moves one, only the feature that uses it switches off. The repository also runs 514 Lua tests against a stubbed battle, and 966 planted bugs across 79 sets check that those tests catch what they should (GitHub). To me that is the most interesting part of the project: a fan mod in beta that tests its own tests.

Press F2 and one soldier becomes yours

Press F2 on a unit and you take it over. Press it on empty ground and you get your general instead, and F2 again hands control back to the AI (GitHub). From there it plays like an action game: WASD moves and the mouse looks, while the mouse buttons swing or fire. Abilities sit on a ten-slot hotbar and are aimed with a crosshair. Shift sprints into a charge and E is a jump attack, while V, or zooming all the way in, switches to first person. Most of the 29 keys can be rebound in the Mod Configuration Tool, along with camera distance and height (GitHub).

In a regiment you play the front man while the rest of the unit holds its ground (Steam Workshop). Lords and heroes work the same way, and so do monsters; a flying one takes off and lands on the space bar. Lords and monsters cannot be hurt while blocking or during their jump and charge attacks, and guns fire at the enemy in range nearest the crosshair (GitHub). Artillery and war machines are played as whole units, and so are regiments whose men cannot fire on their own. The mod draws its own HUD with the unit's portrait, health, ammo and hotbar cooldowns, plus health bars over nearby units colored by side.

It is a single-player beta with a short list of known bugs

The Workshop page keeps the BETA label because not every unit has been tested, and its known-issues list is specific (Steam Workshop). A flyer that lands while you control it stays on the ground until you press F2 twice. Gyrocopters are untested and the Steam Tank cannot sprint. Big monsters can have long reloads. The mod switches itself off in multiplayer battles and in replays, and it stores nothing in campaign saves. The page also warns that antivirus tools may flag memreader Plus, and it gives a SHA-256 hash to check the DLL against.

The Shogun 2 clip has no download

The Short also shows a Shogun 2 clip, posted to r/shogun2 by Fen_thePrecise under the title "Third Person Mod, Control any unit as single entity" (Reddit). It shows one mounted general ridden through gunfire and into a melee, so the "any unit" in the title is the modder's claim and not something the video proves. When I checked on October 21, I found no Shogun 2 third-person mod on mod.io or Nexus Mods, and none on ModDB. Nobody has said how it works inside, so any comparison with the Warhammer III method would be a guess.

Shogun 2 mods are in an odd spot anyway. Total War: Shogun 2 Complete Edition came out on October 13, 2026, developed by Creative Assembly and MATABOO and published by SEGA, and its Steam page now says it is no longer available on the Steam store (Steam). That edition takes mods through mod.io, and mods for the 2011 original do not carry over. ModOpen also reported that standalone Steam sales of the original would end on September 28, 2026 (ModOpen). On October 21 the original's store page still listed it at €29.99 (Steam).

How to install the Warhammer III mod

You need the base game, which cost €59.99 on Steam on October 21, 2026, with 72% of 57,765 English reviews positive (Steam). Subscribe to memreader Plus and to Derpy's Third-Person Battles on the Workshop; both are free, and the Mod Configuration Tool is optional (Steam Workshop). Then start a single-player battle and press F2 on a unit. The Workshop title names vanilla game version 9.0.4 as the build it targets, and the page warns that game patches can break it. If you remove it later, memreader Plus leaves its DLL files in the game folder after you unsubscribe, and they can be deleted by hand.

Questions people ask

How does Total War multiplayer campaign work?

In Warhammer III, up to eight players share a campaign and take their turns at the same time, and in shared battles each player controls a party of a few units. Creative Assembly also built shorter mini campaigns meant to start and finish in one evening (PCGamesN).

How many people can play Warhammer Total War 3?

Eight in the co-op campaign, up from two in Total War: Warhammer II (PCGamesN). The third-person mod is single player only and switches itself off in multiplayer battles (Steam Workshop).

Can you play Total War in 3rd person?

In Warhammer III, yes, with Derpy's Third-Person Battles and memreader Plus from the Steam Workshop (Steam Workshop). For Shogun 2 there is a video from Fen_thePrecise but, as of October 21, 2026, no download (Reddit).

Can you play Total War 3rd person on PS4?

No. The mod is a Steam Workshop item, and memreader Plus is built for 64-bit Windows, with Linux support through Proton (memreader Plus). Warhammer III's Steam page lists versions for Windows and macOS, plus SteamOS and Linux (Steam).